Up She Rises
by Signy1
Summary: Music, they say, hath charms to soothe the savage beast. It may not do much for tropical storms, but it turns out that it hath charms to soothe the savage castaway, too. Riding out yet another storm, it's up to Gilligan to salvage morale.
1. Chapter 1

The wind was howling like a lost soul. The storm had been raging all day, and the cave they were sheltering in, which had seemed so spacious and comfortable when they had first found it, was becoming less so by the moment. There wasn't much doubt that they were going to be faced with an unspeakable mess once the storm finally ended… if it ever did, which was starting to seem less and less likely. The mood in the cave was grim, and the lantern swinging from a projection in the ceiling cast eerie shadows over worried faces.

"Way, hey, and up she rises… way, hey, and up she rises… way, hey, and up she rises… err-lie in the morning," Gilligan chanted, not quite under his breath, keeping time to his singing with a complex rhythm tapped out on his knees.

"For pity's sake, Gilligan," snapped Mr. Howell. "Aren't things dismal enough without you groaning on over there?"

"Oh, I'm not groaning, Mr. Howell," he said cheerfully. "I'm singing!"

"Heavens! I'd rather you groaned!"

Gilligan let that roll off his back. "It's an old sea song," he explained, and started again, louder. "What shall we do with the drunken sailor?"

The Skipper chuckled, and joined in. "What shall we do with the drunken sailor? Oh, what shall we do with the drunken sailor? Err-lie in the morning! Way, hey, and up she rises! Way, hey, and up she rises—c'mon, everyone!"

Ginger, always up for a performance, added her soprano to the mix. "Way, hey, and up she rises, err-lie in the morning. Why 'err-lie,' instead of 'earl-lee,' Skipper?"

"Not a clue," he said jovially. "Sailors have been singing it that way for a hundred years. They used to have a lot of these old songs, and they'd sing 'em as they worked, to keep everyone on the right pace. So they all have about a million verses." He cleared his throat, and sang again. "Stick him in the longboat till he's sober!"

Gilligan sang along with him, continuing to beat out the rhythm on a convenient cask. One by one, the others joined in, at least on the choruses, as the poor drunken sailor had his whiskers shaved with a rusty razor, was thrown headlong into the bilge, and hosed down in the scuppers, punctuated with brief explanations of the more obscure of the nautical terms.

"Put him into bed with the Captain's Daughter…" started the Skipper, but was interrupted by a gasp from Mrs. Howell.

"Really, Captain! Such language! I beg you, do remember that there are ladies present!"

Ginger and Mary Ann traded glances, then looked away, trying not to giggle.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Howell—it's not like that at all," Skipper soothed. "The 'Captain's Daughter' wasn't a person. It's a nickname for a cat o' nine tails. Back in the old days, they used to keep discipline onboard by whipping the sailors when they screwed up."

Slowly, one at a time, the others all turned to look at Gilligan. He jumped theatrically as the weight of their glances fell on him, then folded his arms and mock-glared. "Oh, ha, ha. Very funny," he said sarcastically. "Heh. How about this?" He beat a tattoo on his makeshift drum. "Make him go on a good strict diet! Make him go on a good strict diet! Oh, make him go on a good strict diet! Err-lie in the morning!" He looked at the Skipper, raised an eloquent eyebrow, and launched into the chorus, half praying. _Play along, Skipper! Come on, play along! Please!_

And the Skipper, God bless his wits, got the message. "Oh, yeah? Have him fetch all our wood and water!" he sang.

Gilligan grinned. "Joke's on you, Skipper—I already do that!" He blinked. "Hey, wait a minute!"

Now everyone was chuckling, and they finished the verse in enthusiastic, if slightly wobbly, unison. And mostly on key, too.

The Professor, of all people, improvised the next line. "Taste this extract and see what happens!"

Ginger and Mary Ann whispered to each other as the others finished that one, and stifled giggles through the chorus, and then, lightning-quick, each of them reached over and grabbed a hat. Ginger took the Skipper's, and Mary Ann snatched Gilligan's. Together, they sang, "Hide his cap where he'll never find it!" As the others joined in, they traded, then dropped the caps on the wrong heads as the chorus ended.

Gilligan pulled off the too-large hat, held it by the brim as the Skipper did. Eyes gleaming with pure mischief, he looked the Skipper up and down.

The Skipper shot back his best did-you-want-to-be-buried-or-cremated glare, only slightly marred by the deviltry in his own eyes. Gilligan played to the crowd and jumped, brushing imaginary dust off the cap before handing it over with a meek, hangdog expression. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders in exaggerated anticipation. The Skipper just resettled his cap on his own head with a snort, and plunked Gilligan's onto his, tugging it down over his nose for good measure.

Gilligan snickered, pulling it back into place, and sang another round of the chorus, and the others joined in with no hesitation whatsoever. Ginger even sang harmony in her high, sweet voice. Oh, this was going better than he'd dared to hope, and he hadn't even gotten walloped. The drunken sailor's day got progressively worse as, one by one, the castaways improvised verses about their least favorite island activities; he gutted a mountain of fish, pedaled the washer, built complex equipment from shells and palm fronds, dug refuse pits, fought off headhunters, tried to sleep through the Skipper's snoring—that one did earn Gilligan a crack over the head—cooked yet another coconut-heavy meal, and a thousand other tiny indignities that were suddenly funny, there in the cave with a monsoon raging outside.

The lantern was guttering as the Skipper yawned tremendously, and looked around the cave. The Howells were fast asleep in each other's arms, with Teddy held between them. The girls were both asleep, too, one on either side of the Professor, who was snoring. "I have to hand it to you," the Skipper said. "You did it again, little buddy. You sure got everyone calmed down."

" _We_ did it, Skipper," Gilligan corrected. "If you hadn't gotten everyone singing along, I'd've been sunk two verses out."

"Well, it was a good idea." He yawned again. "Took everyone's mind right off the storm—hey, wait a minute!" He listened intently. "The wind stopped! The storm is over!"

"Yup. Somewhere between the verse about the leak in the shower barrel and the one about chopping pineapples, I forget exactly when."

"And why didn't you say anything?"

"What for?" he shrugged. "It's already night out there, and wet and cold, and the roofs on the huts are probably halfway to Maui by now. Why stop everyone when they're having fun, just so we can go stumble around in the dark and try to get a look at a whole lot of mess we can't do anything about, anyway? That junk isn't going anywhere. We can deal with it later."

The Skipper nodded; the logic was sound. "When did you have in mind to start dealing with it?"

"When else?" Gilligan stretched like a cat, and settled himself, his hands interlaced behind his head. His eyes gleamed in the last bit of light as the lantern gave up the ghost. "Err-lie in the morning, of course."


	2. Chapter 2

The morning came, and they left the safety of the cave. It was err-lie enough to make the Howells exceptionally cross, but beautiful and clear, as though the skies themselves were apologizing for the previous day's misbehavior. _Storm? What sto—oh,_ _ **that**_ _storm? That was all just a mistake. We never meant to inconvenience you in the slightest! Would we do a thing like that? Here, let us make it up to you; today, the sun will be bright and the breezes cool. Just for you._

They walked back to camp, all of them dreading what they might find, and all pretending that they had no such worries in the world, but enough remained of the previous evening's good humor that the pretense was rather more convincing than it had been on previous, similar occasions.

And, as it turned out, while the campsite was in pretty much the state they'd expected, the good news was that all of the huts were still upright, and all of them still possessed at least part of their roofs.

"Okay," the Skipper decided. "Girls, why don't you two start by cleaning up the kitchen; we'll all want to eat something sooner or later—"

"Could it be sooner?" Gilligan said hopefully.

"Shut up, Gilligan," the Skipper said without missing a beat. "Anyway, if worst comes to worst and we don't finish fixing the huts, we can always bunk in the cave again tonight, but if we can have something besides raw coconut for dinner, we'll all be that much happier. Mr. and Mrs. Howell, you two can start by—"

"We'll go see to my golf course," Mr. Howell said firmly. "That rain has probably wreaked havoc with the greens." He set his jaw, ready for the inevitable argument.

"Mr. Howell, the golf course can wait! The two of you can take your pick; start clearing the fallen branches from the campsite, or start gathering up the things that blew away in the storm. I can see three shirts in that bush from here, and all of them are yours!"

"Captain! After a harrowing experience like last night, do you really think my wife is in any condition for manual labor?"

Mrs. Howell knew her cue when she heard it. "Oh, dear, I think I feel one of my fainting spells coming on!"

The Professor reflected to himself that the scientific world would be vastly enriched by a study of Mrs. Howell's fainting spells; there could not possibly be a more conveniently timed disorder in the annals of medical history. It wasn't, however, worth the argument. "Perhaps it would be best if the two of you were to go down to the lagoon. A report on the extent of the damage to that area could prove quite valuable." And it will get you away from the Skipper before we have to listen to yet another iteration of this argument, he thought.

"Well, I suppose we can manage that," Mr. Howell conceded. "A Howell never shirks his duty."

"As long as you're down there, why don't you check the lobster traps?" Gilligan said.

"Shut up, Gilligan," Mr. Howell said, taking his wife's arm and starting down the path. "Lobsters? Pah! This is reconnaissance! It's vitally important that I concentrate! I can't be distracted from my geographical observations by arthropods… especially not the ones with big claws. They pinch my fingers terribly." They swept away in high dudgeon.

"I'll bet he could be distracted by a lobster dinner, though," Mary Ann giggled when the Howells were safely out of earshot. "Oh, well. Let's go see what's left of the kitchen, Ginger. With any luck we'll still have a couple of unbroken plates."

"Even if we don't, we can eat off the pie tins until we can make more plates," Ginger suggested. "I don't think we'll be doing much baking in the next couple of days."

Gilligan looked stricken. "No pie? Not for _days_?"

"Shut up, Gilligan," Mary Ann said, then giggled again, and flashed him an I'm-only-teasing smile. "Not tonight, anyway. If we can get everything back in order quickly, who knows? Maybe tomorrow." With that, she and Ginger left, and if Ginger was hiding a bit of a knowing smirk, that was her own business.

"What should I do, Skipper?" asked the Professor.

"Well," the Skipper said. "We need to fix the roofs, but for that we need a ladder, and we'll have to build a new one. I can just about see the top half of the old one way up there in that tree."

"Why don't I just climb up and get it?" Gilligan offered. "Wouldn't that be faster than starting over?"

"It would," the Skipper agreed. "Unfortunately, I can also see the _bottom_ half of the ladder in _that_ tree all the way over there."

"It might still be good if we only needed to climb up a short way?" he tried.

"But we need to climb up a _long_ way to get to the roof," the Skipper capped the argument. "We'll need two big poles, at least twelve feet long, and lucky for us, I have the machete. You can harvest some palm fronds while you're at it; we'll need a lot of them to patch all these holes."

"Wait a minute, Skipper," the Professor said suddenly. "Gilligan, can you climb up and retrieve the broken ladder? I think I have a way to make the job a bit easier."

Gilligan nodded. "Sure thing. I'm always up for ways to make the job easier!" With that, he grabbed a handy length of vine from the ground, and was up the tree like a monkey. Upon reaching the segment of ladder, he tied the vine around the bottom rung, climbed up a few feet more, looped the vine over a sturdy-looking branch, and tossed down the other end. "I'm gonna get it loose from the branches, okay? You guys grab hold of this end, and then you can lower it down nice and easy."

The Skipper, slightly surprised, took the vine and braced himself. "Here I was expecting him just to drop it on my head," he said, sotto voce to the Professor.

Gilligan, high above, tugged at the ladder, which was rather well entangled. "Come on," he mumbled, crawling out a bit further on the tree limb and pulling harder. "Get out of there. Whoever heard of a ladder in a tree? Come loos—SKIPPPERRR!"

The Skipper, unprepared, was nearly jerked off his feet with the sudden yank of the vine. The ladder, had, in fact, come loose. Entirely loose. Out of the tree and halfway to the ground loose, with Gilligan hanging on to it like grim death.

The force of the sudden stop as the Skipper jerked it taut flipped the ladder over, and the Skipper found himself nose-to-nose with Gilligan, hanging by his knees from what was now the bottom rung. He still had the wherewithal to say cheerfully, "Didn't drop it on your head, anyway, right, Skipper?"

The Skipper just shook his head as he lowered him to the ground. "Okay, Professor, here's your half-ladder. What did you want it for?"

The Professor wiggled the rungs experimentally. "Excellent! The vines we used to tie the whole thing together have come a bit loose."

Gilligan looked at the rung he had been clutching for dear life mere moments before, then looked up into the tree, and swallowed hard. "That's excellent?" he said dubiously.

"As regards re-purposing this fragment, absolutely. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

"Well, okay, Professor," the Skipper said. "If you say so. We'll just start cleaning up all this deadfall while you do that."

Twenty minutes later, there was a sizeable pile of fallen branches stacked neatly to the side of the clearing, the ground was relatively clear, and the Professor was showing them his new device. It was still mostly ladder-like, but the side pieces, each about seven feet long, now formed two sides of a triangle, and the rungs had been retied to fit the triangle. It looked like the letter 'A' with a lot of extra crosspieces, and a long loop of vines was attached at the apex.

"What is it, Professor?" Skipper, mystified, asked.

"A travois," the Professor explained. "A primitive type of non-wheeled transport. It's held at an angle, so that the tips of the poles are the only parts that touch the ground. The burden is tied between the shafts, keeping it off the ground, and the harness is attached at the pointed end."

"Hey, that's pretty nifty," Gilligan said.

"Yes, we'll be able to carry back the materials we need to repair the huts much more efficiently. With the weight distributed evenly along the poles, we'll be able to carry two or three times as much at a time."

"Two or three times as much? But who's… who's gonna… be the one… who…" Gilligan looked from the Professor to the Skipper, read the predictable answer in their faces, and with an only slightly theatrical sigh intended to inform the world at large precisely how put-upon and abused he really was, slipped the loops of the vine harness over his shoulders. "Yes, sir," he said, resignedly. "You said it was palm fronds we needed, right?"

"Well, palm fronds and a couple of twelve foot poles for a new ladder," the Skipper said. "Let's go."

"We're gonna take turns being on this end of the trombone, right?" Gilligan said, fairly sure he already knew the answer, but it never hurt to try.

"The trom—? Oh. You mean the 'travois.' And yes, we'll take turns," the Professor promised.

They set off into the jungle. The storm had brought down enough palm fronds to rebuild an entire city's worth of grass huts, so no tree-climbing was required, and Gilligan was pleasantly surprised to find that the Professor's new contraption really did make carrying the load far easier than it would have been if he had just slung it over his shoulder like usual. That didn't mean that some strategic complaining wasn't still in order, but it was nice, anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

They were headed back out of the jungle with what was probably going to be the last of the palm fronds when they ran into the girls, each carrying a bucket of berries. The Skipper and the Professor were walking just to the rear and to either side of the loaded travois, each carrying one of the long bamboo pieces that would, with any luck, make a sturdier ladder than the previous version. Gilligan was still pulling the travois, on the grounds that when the inevitable accident occurred, the other two would far rather be hit with falling palm fronds than a twelve-foot length of wood.

"You fellows look like hansom cab drivers in Central Park," Ginger called.

"You look real pretty today, too," Gilligan said, uncomfortably blushing just a bit.

"I said hansom cabs—you know, the horse drawn carriages. Not 'handsome' cabs… well, maybe that _was_ what I meant. You fellows are certainly that, too," she said with a slow smile.

"Oh, okay," Gilligan said, and whinnied like a horse, because he didn't like where this conversation was going.

"Whoa there, boy," she said, sultry and amused, which wasn't any improvement.

Mary Ann chuckled, and held out a handful of blackberries. "Sorry. No sugar cubes today."

He took one, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his mouth on its way down. "Mmm. Nothing to be sorry about; they're good!"

"Got enough for everybody?" the Skipper asked, shifting his grip on the bamboo.

"Of course," Ginger said, and popped one in his mouth. She was rewarded with another blush. "Anyhow, the kitchen wasn't really all that bad at all," she told them. "So we thought we'd get something…. sweet… to celebrate."

"Nothing too fancy," Mary Ann clarified, "And sorry, no pies yet. But we'll be getting something besides raw coconut, at least."

"Well, that's wonderful news," the Professor said, waving away an offered blackberry. "But be careful and don't stray too far from camp; we haven't yet ascertained the precise extent of the storm's damage. Even if dinner is only raw fruit, it wouldn't do us any harm."

Mary Ann smiled at that. "And we'll roll the old chariot along… well, drag it along, anyhow."

"What?" the Skipper said, confused by the non-sequitur.

The smile broadened. "Another old song, Skipper. Since it seems you men have gone and built a chariot, it seems appropriate. 'We'll roll the old chariot along… and we'll all hang on behind,'" she sang.

"Oh, I know that one," he said, recognizing it. "That's 'A Drop of Nelson's Blood.'"

"Nelson's blood?" Ginger said. "That sounds terrible. Is it a song about murder? "

"Not really blood," the Skipper said. "They're talking about rum."

"Yo ho ho," Ginger said, smiling again.

"Yeah! Skipper told me the whole story," Gilligan said enthusiastically. "How Admiral Nelson got killed in battle, and they put him in a barrel of rum to take him home to be buried, but when they got there and opened up the barrel, he was still in there, but all the rum was gone. He'd drunk it all up on the way."

"Preposterous," the Professor said, but he was smiling. "You can't honestly believe that a dead man would drink a barrel of rum."

"I've known a lot of _alive_ sailors who'd be more than happy to drink a barrel of rum. Maybe dead ones do, too," Gilligan reasoned.

Mary Ann shivered happily. "Do you really think it's true, Gilligan?"

"I dunno. It was hundreds of years ago—I wasn't there or anything," he said with a noncommittal shrug. "You should ask Skipper."

The Skipper gave him a sour look. "It's just a story, anyway," he said. "Not quite a ghost story, but next best thing, I guess. But that's what they're talking about in the song. 'A drop of Nelson's Blood wouldn't do us any harm' just means that they'd like to have a drink."

"Raw fruit for dinner wouldn't do us any harm," she sang in answer. "Oh, raw fruit for dinner wouldn't do us any harm! No, raw fruit for dinner wouldn't do us any harm. And we'll all hang on behind!"

The others joined in for the chorus, just as they had the previous night. The Skipper chimed in with a verse to the effect that 'Building a new ladder wouldn't do them any harm,' and by the time they finished that one, they were back in camp. Where the Howells were sitting on their retrieved deck chairs, looking spent. Time to forestall another argument about work ethics… Gilligan slid to the ground with a thump, lowering the platform of leaves to the ground next to the girls' hut, and shinnied out of his vine traces. "Taking off that harness wouldn't do me any harm," he sang, catching his breath. "No, taking off that harness wouldn't do me any harm. Oh, taking off that harness wouldn't do me any harm! And it's _someone else's turn!_ " He grinned at the Skipper, who obligingly scowled back, with an answering smile tugging at the edges of his mouth.

An hour or so later, the girls were tossing a fruit salad, the Professor was putting the last touches on the ladder, the Skipper and Gilligan were weaving roof panels to be nailed into place as soon as said ladder was finished, and the Howells were conducting.

By that time, a great many things, it turned out, would not do them any harm. He could suffer through a phone call to his broker, according to Mr. Howell, while Mrs. Howell thought an evening at the opera would not come amiss. Mary Ann was quite certain that a double chocolate malted would be harmless, in the great scheme of things, Ginger thought she could survive a starring role on Broadway, and a steak, opined the Skipper, would be entirely tolerable. The Professor bravely offered to throw himself onto a new scientific journal and hope for the best. And any number of other things, really. Going shopping. A television set. Proper cosmetics. A better set of golf clubs. Soft mattresses. A new Mosquitos album.

(Well, actually, that one had sparked a bit of discussion. "Heavens to Tiffany," Mr. Howell had shuddered. "That noise most certainly would do me a great deal of harm!" "Never mind _you_ ," the Skipper had shot back, for once in full agreement. "A new Mosquitoes album would drive me into doing somebody _else_ a great deal of harm!" There was just no pleasing some people.)

It took most of the day, and they were all bone-tired by the time night had fallen, but they had done it; the huts were as watertight as they had ever been, most of their scattered possessions had been reclaimed, and life could go back to normal… such as it was. And there was a feeling of—could it be? Yes, yes it was—satisfaction, and perhaps even contentment, in the air. Once more, they had taken everything the island could throw at them, and they had prevailed. They were all still there, and none the worse for wear, either. So what if there had been a few holes in their huts? Who cared about a few extra loads of laundry to clean their rain-spoiled bedding? They'd been through worse, and they were still unbowed and unbroken. They'd come through it all, and they'd done it with laughter and a song.

That was something to be proud of. _They_ were something to be proud of.

"As long as we're together, what could do us any harm?" Gilligan sang under his breath, poking up the fire.

Mary Ann heard him, and joined in, a bit louder. "Oh, as long as we're together, what could do us any harm?"

Everyone came in for the last bit, and their voices were solemn, almost reverent. "As long as we're together, what could do us any harm? We'll just all hang on behind."


	4. Chapter 4

The blackberries really were at their best just about then. Fat and juicy and sweet. They weren't much like chocolate, Gilligan thought, but perhaps they'd do. They'd have to. There was no chocolate for at least a hundred miles as the crow flew, and he wasn't a crow. Chicken possibly; he wasn't about to deny that, but crow was beyond his range.

He poured the berries into a sieve he'd liberated from the kitchen, balanced the whole thing on top of a bowl half-full of coconut milk, and began smashing the berries with a smooth beach stone. Rich, juicy, purplish pulp began to drip into the milk, and he tossed in another handful of berries and kept going.

By the time he was finished, the bowl was nearly full of thickish purple stuff. He poured in some honey to sweeten it a bit more, and stirred vigorously. He tasted the concoction. It was, more or less, absolutely nothing like a chocolate malted, he decided, seeing as how he was lacking all the critical ingredients to make a real one, but it tasted good. Maybe that would be enough.

Chilling it was another problem—no refrigerators, no ice, and a daily temperature in the high eighties at the very least—but he had thought that if he put it under the waterfall, which was usually at least pleasantly cool, it might do something. So he poured the whole bowlful of purple glop into a glass bottle, likewise stol— _borrowed_ from the kitchen, corked it tightly, tied it to a branch by its neck, and tossed it into the water. It could bob around in the cool water for a few hours while he arranged the rest of it, and with any luck it would all work. He hoped it would work, anyway. He was already going to be in hot water when the Skipper found out that he hadn't spent the day repairing the fence around the well, and if it turned out to be all for nothing, that would be a real shame. A real loud shame.

OoOoOoO

Mary Ann was in her hut when something rattled against the door. It sounded like hail.

She glanced up, shrugged, and went back to work. The rattle came again, and this time a few pieces of the gravel that had been flung against the door came in through the window. Annoyed, she dropped her mending on the bed, and flung open the door, intending to give whoever it was a piece of her mind.

No one was there. There was only an arrow on the ground, picked out in seashells. She followed the arrow for a few paces, and saw another, identical seashell arrow pointing into the jungle. She followed that one, then the next, until she reached a small clearing. A large rock had been covered with a scrap of sailcloth to make a table, and on the table was a tall bamboo tumbler, filled with something creamy and purple. It had been topped with a white flower that almost looked like whipped cream, and the note lying next to it on the table read, "Mary Ann, injoy your malltid! Zorry it izn't choklite."

And no, it wasn't chocolate. It wasn't even, really, a malted. And as she took the first sip, it tasted of salt because it seemed that she was crying. And as for the note, well, the spelling was inimitably disgraceful, and the 's'es were all backwards, and if she had ever read two sentences that had made her happier, she couldn't remember them.

Smiling like a sunrise, and ignoring the occasional tears that ran down her face, she sat and drank it, slowly, savoring each blackberry-flavored mouthful. And for a few minutes, she was at the soda counter in Horner's Corners. For a few minutes, she was home, safe and familiar and beloved, and she was just treating herself to something sweet before driving back to the farm and her family and her real life. For those few minutes, everything was all right.

She'd never had a milkshake she'd enjoyed more.

OoOoOoO

Meanwhile, Ginger was sitting in a cove with a thin hand- sewn booklet, with a cover made of banana-leaf. She had found it lying on her dressing table that afternoon, but after a cursory glance at the contents, had made a somewhat hurried exit. This was not the sort of thing that could be read in so public a place. This called for privacy, and plausible deniability if her eyes were a bit red afterwards.

The title, according to the large letters taking up the entire front page, was 'The Prinzezz of the Izland, Ztaring GINGER GRANT.' The rest of the book was a script for a play. The plot was somewhat convoluted, but it involved the aforementioned princess, who, as it turned out, was also a superheroine who liked to fly around her island kingdom thwarting evildoers. There were subplots involving a wicked pirate, a robot from Mars, and a witch's curse, and if the story didn't make much sense, that was all right, because the dialogue wasn't very good, either. In fact, from a purely critical point of view, it had no literary merit whatsoever, and any audience would have walked out before the first intermission, if only in search of rotten fruit to throw at the hapless cast. But on every page, the princess got to say, sing, or do something dramatic, and they all lived happily ever after in the end.

She'd had a play written for her once before. She still believed that, given the chance, it would have made her a star. Even so, she rather thought she liked this one better.

OoOoOoO

Two down, four to go, Gilligan thought happily, whistling as he fixed the fence.


	5. Chapter 5

Quietly, with no fanfare, over the next few days similar items began appearing in the various huts. A clamshell emblazoned with the word 'TIFENNY' appeared on Mrs. Howell's dressing table one afternoon; it opened to reveal a necklace of tiny white shells, with a bit of blue sea glass as a pendant.

It was the sort of cheap gimcrack she might have expected to see at a beachside souvenir stand, not that that she would ever have been close enough to such a place to see their merchandise. She would never have willingly looked at anything like it, once, let alone condescended to own it, and the suggestion that she might wear such a thing would have driven her into a fainting spell. Seashells and polished glass, strung on braided palm fiber? For a _Howell_? Her jewelry box was a treasure trove, and the best was none too good for her; gold for everyday, platinum for when one felt like being a bit more dressy. Gems from the four corners of the earth glittered in rainbow profusion, a king's ransom or a dragon's hoard. And now this.

At dinner that night, the tiki torches gleamed on the blue sea glass resting over her heart, and no queen ever wore her ancestral regalia with greater pride.

OoOoOoO

Mr. Howell, on the other hand, couldn't quite figure out the purpose of the bamboo contraption he found on his sideboard some days later. It had a squat base, a key like a music box, and a dome that looked suspiciously like the top half of a birdcage crowning the whole thing. Experimentally, he turned the key, and a strip of paper began to feed out of a slot on the side. HOWELL STOK +10… OTHOR STOK +5… ANUTHER STOK -2… HOWELL STOK +20… BAD STOK -8… DIFFRINT STOK +4… HOWELL STOK +30.

He rewound the tape, and slowly spooled it back out again, several times. Ticker tape machines had played a part in many of his happiest moments. He didn't even really remember a time when he hadn't had one within arm's reach; they had been the pounding heartbeat of his life, and they had chronicled his every waking moment, his agonies and his triumphs. Often obscenely intermingled. He'd graduated high school on the day Amalgamated had lost eighteen points. His father had died mere hours before AT&T had jumped eleven. Because the market didn't _care_ ; it did what it did and you either got used to it or got out while you could. Ticker tape machines had nothing to do with kindness.

At least, the ones he'd used back home hadn't.

OoOoOoO

The Professor, keen observer of humanity that he was, had wondered what he might see on his workbench when his turn came around. His mental bet with himself was that it would be a handwritten booklet like Ginger's, filled with misspelled, quasi-literate observations on the flora and fauna of the island, and he was, if truth be told, rather looking forward to seeing what Gilligan considered scientific.

What he found was a small bamboo cylinder on a stand. On closer inspection it proved to be hollow, with a glass lens at one end. He peered into the tube. The magnifying lenses, he realized after a few moments, had been salvaged from the Japanese sailor's eyeglasses. It was simple, even crude. And yet. It was a microscope. Here, on this deserted island. After more than three years… he had a _microscope_.

He'd expected little more than that he might get a fond chuckle or two from his gift. The old saw about what happened when one assumed had never been more apropos.

OoOoOoO

And then there was the Skipper. He was sitting at the communal table reading his detective magazine for the ten millionth time, trying to convince himself that knowing who the killer was before you even started the story really wasn't as great a drawback as all that, and not having much success. He sighed. Trying to relax was winding him up tighter than a ten-cent watch.

Something hit him between the shoulder blades, and he was actually relieved at the distraction. It gave him an excuse to get up and leave, to stop pretending that he was having a pleasant afternoon. It was probably that stupid chimp again; the rotten monkey had never quite given up hope that if it threw enough things, eventually they'd start exploding again. And the way had it chittered and yowled after scoring a bull's-eye on the back of the Skipper's head with an extremely ripe mango the week before had sounded suspiciously like laughter. If he could avoid a second salvo, he would be a fool not to.

He wandered into his hut. He'd take a swim, he decided. Rinse off a layer or two of sweat and get in a bit of exercise at the same time. He reached into the closet for his towel, and something came clattering to the ground with it.

He stooped to pick it up. It was a carved toy boat about the size of his hand. Probably one of Gilligan's little bathtime armada, he thought, about to shove it back. If he'd told him once, he'd told him a thousand times to keep his junk out of the Skipper's half of the closet, but did the kid listen? Of course not. Why, back on board ship, that kind of messiness would have gotten him—

He stopped, looked more closely at the toy boat in his hand. It was white, with an open cockpit, sturdy rather than graceful, and every inch was as familiar to the Skipper as the shape of his own shadow. He turned the boat over, and smiled; picked out in blue, as he'd known it would be, was the name _SS Minnow_. He'd had a girl in every port, as the old cliché had it, but none to compare with the lady who carried him in and out of port. His Minnow, who, gallant old soul that she was, had brought them safely to shore when all had seemed lost. Not quite the shore they'd had in mind, perhaps, but he couldn't fault her for that. She'd done her best. How he missed her.

He stood her on the sideboard, where she could stand guard over the hut, and where he could see her from his hammock. Then he left the hut; he knew what he was looking for, now.

OoOoOoO

The Skipper eventually found him; he was fishing by the lagoon, and singing under his breath.

"That's how they showed their respect for Paddy Murphy/ That's how they showed their honor and their pride/ They said it was a sin and a shame, and—oh, hiya, Skipper."

"Hello," the Skipper said, settling in beside him. "What's that you're singing? Another sea shanty?"

"Nah, this one's landlocked. 'The Night Pat Murphy Died.' My grandfather must have known a million of these from the old country."

"Sounds kind of grim."

"Not that one; it's all about how blitzed his friends got at the wake. Grandma always shook her head and said he was setting us kids a bad example, and he'd say that if you couldn't be a good example, you might as well be a horrible warning. Come to think of it, maybe half the songs were about getting drunk."

"What about the other half?"

"Getting hung, mostly. Or shot, there were a lot of those, too." He scratched his head thoughtfully. "Maybe that's why so many of them are full of lines like 'whack-fol-dee-diddle-dum,' you think? I mean, if you're getting hung you're probably not worrying too much about coming up with good rhymes, and after the fifth pint, no one's going to remember the words, anyway."

"I don't think the person being hung is writing his own songs, but maybe if he…" He stopped himself, and huffed a short laugh. "How do I get caught up in these crazy conversations?"

"Search me. Just lucky, I guess."

"Sure. Real lucky," he said. "Fish biting?"

"Kinda," Gilligan said. "Mostly not big enough to keep, though. There's nothing in any of the traps, and I think I've caught Irving three times so far. I sure hope Mary Ann can figure out how to split two fish seven ways without anyone getting too cranky."

"I'm sure she'll manage," the Skipper said. "I don't think anyone's ever left one of Mary Ann's dinners still hungry."

Gilligan looked eloquently at the Skipper's middle, which gave mute testimony to his unfamiliarity with going hungry, but didn't take it any further than that.

The Skipper gave him an equally eloquent look in return, but his cap remained on his head. Gilligan reeled in his line, gently unhooked a small fish, and threw it back. "Four times," he sighed. "Maybe he's telling all his friends to stay away."

"Maybe," the Skipper agreed. "I think we're looking at fruit salad for dinner again."

"Sorry, Skipper," Gilligan said. "I'm doing my best."

"I know. Not your fault." He shrugged. "We can't _order_ the fish to bite."

"Huh. Hadn't thought to try that," Gilligan said. He rebaited his line, and cast expertly. "Now hear this! All fish of the right size for dinner, report to Gilligan's hook. That's an order! Ten-hut!"

Hearing what was, for all intents and purposes, his own voice coming out of his crewman's mouth was no less uncanny now than it had been the first time he'd heard it, lo these many years ago, and the Skipper boomed a laugh. "If anything's going to get their attention, that ought to do it," he said, and shook his head. "You know, the shenanigans you've been pulling these last couple of days, they've really lifted everybody's spirits. Mary Ann's malted, and Mr. Howell's ticker tape machine, and all the rest of it. And the little Minnow… well. You did good, little buddy. Bravo Zulu."

As always, the praise lit him up like a grinning jack-o-lantern, glowing from the inside out. "Thanks, Skipper," he said. "Everyone did seem pretty happy, didn't they?"

"Sure did," the Skipper said. "Everybody got at least a taste of the things they missed from back home, and I think it's really boosted morale. But you know…"

"What is it, Skipper?"

"You never told us what _you_ miss."

"Me? Well… lots of things. Movies, and motorcycles, and hamburgers, and all that kind of stuff. I miss when 'running water' didn't mean 'everybody yelling at me to hurry up with the buckets.' I miss sailing, and meeting all those new people every day on the tours. But I guess… I guess what I miss most is how, sometimes, after we dropped them all back off at the marina, we would take the Minnow out again and go fishing in the evenings," Gilligan said meditatively.

The Skipper looked at him, incredulous. " _Fishing_? We do that all the time! We're fishing right now!"

"Yeah, but it's different here," Gilligan insisted. "Back in Honolulu, we went fishing because it was fun. Just me and my big buddy and the whole ocean, with nowhere we needed to be or anything we had to do. Here we're fishing because it's up to us to take care of the others. If we don't catch something good, there's no dinner. It's not the same."

The Skipper softened. "You're right. It's not."

"So, yeah, I think that's what I miss most. Going fishing when it was just for fun, and not part of the job. It's a big responsibility, five people all counting on us, and it's got to be even harder for you, since you're the captain, and you have to give all the orders. All I've got to do is follow 'em."

The Skipper nodded. These occasional flashes of blinding insight were another thing uncanny about his seemingly simple first mate. He was like an iceberg; there was the bit you could see… and a whole lot more that you didn't, right up until the moment it took out your hull.

Gilligan grinned, and nudged him, shifting the mood. "Hey. Remember how I'd always bring a ditty bag with some extra clothes? Pretty much every time we went out, I ended up in the drink. Either because I tripped and fell, or because you got mad about something and tossed me overboard."

"Sure I remember," the Skipper chuckled. "That's why I told you to always wear red; it made you easier to see when I was trying to haul you back in with the boat hook."

"Anyway, it's a good thing I had it, or I'd be wearing a grass skirt by now," Gilligan said, looking ruefully at his jeans, which had had a hard life and looked it.

"It sure is a good thing. Trust me, nobody wants to see that happen!"

"You can say that again. Those things are drafty."

"Well, anyway, we're both lucky we had some spares onboard," the Skipper said. "And I thought the others were nuts to drag all their luggage along with them, but it's been a real lifesaver."

Gilligan made a face. " _They_ weren't dragging their luggage anywhere, Skipper _. I_ was, remember? I thought my back was gonna snap before I got all that junk stowed away."

He snorted. "Fair enough. Either way, it was a lucky break. The Professor's books alone have been worth their weight in gold."

"Yeah. Although it would be nice if he had a doctor book that told him how to make medicines that don't all taste so terrible. Some of them, I think I'd rather be sick."

"Between you and me, I think he does it on purpose to weed out any malingering. Remember old Doc Morgenstern?"

"Who could forget him? If you weren't gushing blood or something, he didn't want to hear about it. And you can bet you weren't getting excused from duty unless you were actually dying. 'What is this, some kind of joke? For this you come to bother me? Take two aspirin, and get back to your station before I put you on report!'"

"Good guy when the chips were down, but he definitely believed that work was the best cure for what ailed ya."

"Skipper, if there was an officer on the entire ship—maybe the entire Navy—who didn't believe that work was the best cure for _everything_ , I sure never served with him!"

The Skipper laughed. "Neither did I, little buddy, neither did I. Hasn't killed either of us yet, though."

"Now there, Captain, old bean," Gilligan said in G. Thurston Howell the Fourth's supercilious Haahvaahd tones, "I know they _say_ that hard work never killed anybody… but why take the chance, what? Or else—hey!" Switching abruptly back to his own voice as something tugged at his line, he reeled in a large snapper. "That should take care of dinner," he said happily, and put it safely into the creel with the rest of his catch.

"Well, in that case…" the Skipper drawled, and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. "If we're trying to remind ourselves of home, you said it yourself. Our fishing trips always ended the same way, didn't they?"

There was never much chance of escaping that iron grip, and Gilligan's halfhearted attempt at escape was quite obviously only for form's sake. "I said only if you got mad about something! What'd I do? What are you mad about?"

"Oh, I don't know," the Skipper said, hauling him to his feet, and off them. One hand on the back of his friend's collar and the other taking firm hold of his belt, he grinned at him, laughter—and affection— gleaming in his eyes. "Does there need to be a reason?"

"Hey! Put me down! No, Skipper, stop! Skipppperrrrr!" His protests ended with an abrupt splash as the Skipper heaved him into the lagoon and dusted off his hands.

He didn't come up.

"…Gilligan?" The Skipper stopped laughing, and looked out at the water. Sure enough, the red made it just barely possible to see the small, unmoving figure a few yards out and a yard or two deep. He leapt into the lagoon and dragged Gilligan's limp form to the surface.

Gilligan lifted his head, suddenly back in full control of himself, and with unerring precision, spewed a jet of water directly between the Skipper's eyes.

The Skipper sputtered, and dropped him, and Gilligan dove back underwater and away, pausing only long enough to shout over his shoulder, "You can't catch me!"

The Skipper had learned to swim in the same school Gilligan had, and, if Gilligan was faster, the water did not entirely negate the advantages of size and weight. They were, to some degree, evenly matched once both were in deep water. So when Mary Ann and Ginger came to the cove to see if they would be having fish for dinner or not, the Skipper was being ducked for the third time, followed in fairly short order by Gilligan being shoved back underwater for the fourth, the whole process punctuated by a great deal of splashing and chasing and shouted mock-threats of increasingly arcane nautical tortures.

"Do men _ever_ grow up?" Mary Ann asked, shaking her head fondly.

"Not so that I've noticed," Ginger replied, with an amused shrug. "Come on, let's get these fish cooking. They'll come home when they're hungry."

As they started back to camp, Mary Ann took one last look over her shoulder at the two men doing their playful best to drown one another. Yes, she thought, they'd come home when they were hungry… and, be honest, Mary Ann. It really _was_ home, now, wasn't it?

Even down to the milkshakes.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Author's note: The sea shanties they were singing in the earlier chapters are real. And improvising verses was always part of the point of the shanties themselves; they were one of the very few accepted ways for the crew to vent their feelings about the grindingly hard work, terrible living conditions, and, often, tyrannical officers. A great many surviving shanties contain verses to the effect that the crew would have liked to see the skipper or the mate, or preferably both, thrown overboard 'where the sharks would have his body and the devil take his soul,' and I imagine that the crew of the Minnow would have been rather deeply wounded. After sorting out the insulting ones, and the ones about shipwrecks, which would have cut a bit too close to home, and nixing the ones about the tendency of sailors on shore to overindulge in adult beverages and adult behavior, which the Skipper would never have allowed to be sung in either mixed company or where Gilligan could hear them, I ended up with the relatively safe 'Drunken Sailor' and 'Nelson's Blood.' I'd intended to incorporate a few more of them into this piece, but… well… Gilligan had other ideas, and that was the end of that. I do recommend anyone interested to seek out some of the old shanties; they're inordinately fun to sing. And as regards the Irish traditional songs I referenced, rest assured I'm fully aware that there are a lot of them that involve neither executions nor alcoholic excess. For one thing, there are quite a few songs about pretty girls, but can you see our shy friend trying to sing any of those?

Author's note, part 2: I can say from experience that, provided that one can get a good deep breath beforehand, the 'playing dead' tactic utilized by Gilligan in the last scene is, in fact, an excellent way to get any opponents one might happen to be facing in a splash fight to lower their guard and come in close, at least long enough to _get 'em good_. I can, however, also say, again from experience, that it's also a good way to inspire said opponents to seek revenge, often quite creatively, so be warned. All in all, though, if one is fortunate enough to have a nice day, an ocean, and a good friend, simultaneously, it can be a genuinely delightful way to spend an hour or two.


End file.
